Re:If you have the inspiration...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
I am selling a service. My deliverable is consulting. I though that was clear but I make that post early A.M. waiting for a phone call from a parent who is in England on a funeral. So pardon any lack of clarity and as always my spelling sucks:) Anyway, the point is that to start up, apart from oppertunity cost of not doing another job ($0.00 for unemployed people) starting up is cheap. The focus is not the deliverable (in my case a per-diem consulting servive) but the selling of. And learning how to do that, in the real world, is not picked up in the classroom but in the back of a good book store over a week of coffee drinking IMHO. Learn to sell FIRST then start getting oppoinments while you fine tune your deliverable. IMO.
Re:If you have the inspiration...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
For calling, etc, look no further than the author "Stephan Schiffman" and start with his book "Cold Calling Techniques." It even covers warm calls and using warm calls specifically when you have referrals. For pulling more referrals, I didn't get it from any one title, but in Borders Books Stores here in the states (NY specifically) they call have thier sales and marketing books in a little section together. Drink a coffee there, read the books for free, and bring a yellow pad to take notes:) In regards to pulling referrals, I'll give you a quick summary that works a charm.
1) At end of service, ask what you think could have been improved!
2) Then ask about things they likes about service.
3) Now that tone is possitive, they just spend two minutes talking about why they like you, be blunt and say something like, "And one of the reasons I can charge so little for those benefits is because referrals are a big part of what I do when I help someone as much as I've helped you. Lets sit down for just 5 minutes, and think of 5 to 10 names of people you have ahunch might like to hear about what I do."
Simple, stright up, and you do it right after they finished saying what they likes. Usually, I give a similar line before I work with someone, right after I talk about fees. So I assume the consent of the referral. "Mr Prospect, one of the reasons I only charge $1,200 for the per-diem service is because if and when you love, not like but love what I do, we'll site down for a whapping three minutes and thing of 5 or so people you can referr me too. Does that sound fair?" Then shut up. He'll say "OK" and there you go. Then do the negative-positive-ask process at the end and if you really did perform your duties, you;ve got 5-10 names to call. And only after a bit of expierience would anyone agree with what i'm about to say: If anyone says NO that why will not give you referrals if they like your service, don't take them on as a client. You are looking at someone you will caus eyou tgrouble and cost you probrablly in support with 100 phone calls a month becaus they are cheap. Fuck'em. One out of 50 will say no. FOr peole like that I have a four letter work for them. "Next"!
Re:If you have the inspiration...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
First, forgive the simplistic rant. Mom's ill and other shit and blah blah blah. Anyway, I still feel strongly about the things I talked about.
So to answer your question, I sell my consulting service to a specific type of professional. It's actually a market that gets little attention from small-time consultants, yet could really use their help. Consulting the individual professional in the field is the hot thing. So I sell that service, and then I consult and help their businesses so they can be better at what they do. And then I get a check.
The selling part, the part that eats the soul and carries a dark stigmatism with it, is the major part. I could sell vacumes but sell enough and you can pay the rent! However, I am always nice, professional, and when someone doesn't want something, or need it, I tell them up front.
Selling at first involved cold calling proferssionals at work, simply saying I though they might be interested in meeting to see if I can make their lives easier, etc, and if they want to meet we meet. If not, I say "Thank you and have a nice day." No problem. After hundreds of calls I've NEVER had someone irritated. Becauyse i don't bullshit. I say simply I want to meet to talk about helping them. STRAIGHT to the point in 10 seconds. And believe it or not, if I talk to 10 people, 2 will meet. So its a numbers game from there.
And the cold calling dwindles down a LOT once you work with someone and ger referrals. Service a client, get 5 referrals (lots of good books talk about how to get them easily and without irritating the client) and then I have 5 strong leads to call. Start getting refferals and you don't have to cold call.
So I'm a little vauge in answering exactly what I sell for my own reasons, but it's a consulting service for the individual professional of a specific profession. With that in mind, ask what you are good at? Learn a bit about selling and how to inform people that you are good at it, and know how to convery that your skill can help them save money, be better at thier jobs, and you can get checks for your work. That's the essence to self employment I'm talking about and that I do. And with that, you work harder, but not for less vacation time, as the post discusses. You get much more freedom than any 15 day pool of "days off" could ever give me in the corporate world.
I'll shut up now. One size does not fit all, this is just my expierience and the ways in which I think others can also help themselves.
If you have the inspiration...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...I'll keep my rant short and sweet. And you need to spend time in a good book store to learn the details of the things I'll say, but that part is easy too. Just learn to read and buy some coffee and read the books in the store.
Yes, anyone can do it. For about $500 in the U.S. you can get an "S Corporation". Then you are self employed and your own boss. Whatever your "deliverable" is, consulting, whatever, learn about SELLING. Learn to cold call, warm call, market, etc. Read three books on each at least, because chances are two are shit and one will be good. USE that book store. Don't just peruse Guns and Ammo and PC Mag. Now read up on accounting. Then basic tax law. Then get yourself an accountant and an attornet to handle the little bits. Initially, you need only $2000 or $3000 the first year (of course this is to keep the S Corp running, I'm not talking about savings to pay for rent).
Now sell your deliverable. DOn't spend money on adverts. CALL. USE THE PHONE. Sell. Then deliver. Sell more. After a year you might end up where I am after doing this, and where many small business people are... making a nice upper-middle class income that is comfy, and you are self employed and your own boss. Work harder... for yourself. Enjoy the great amazing tax breaks US Gov gives you for trying to start a biz. Work harder for less vacation time? Not if you are self employed.
It almost is that easy. After 5 years of GUI Java development, the last of the dot com bubble popped me out of the wall st area. Now I'm self employed and loving it. HARD WORK. You could make 0 but there is NO salary cap. Anyway, use that bookstore. Amazing what's in there. When I sit there reading a good selling book and a tax book, and I look around at all the slobs dripping coffee ofer their shitty little magazines before they have to go to sleep and be ready at their cubicle at 9:00am the next morning, I laugh. End of rant. Go sell. Good luck.
Very good points. However when you say " If you can reach a wider audience you can make more money." I would argue that you need make sure you are reaching the RIGHT audience, not just a large number of them. I would even argue that a much smaller audienc, but perfectly targeted, would be better than a large broad audience. Of course, for name branding the larger audience might still prefered.
All that said, I love TiVo. Don't own one, but will in a few weeks after I finish working with some larger clients. Can't wait cause it looks like a real treat!
Use DRM to expire content after a week after you first play it if you want, but this would allow me to retrieve a program and then watch it at my convenience.
I mean this most kindly, but in regards to what television is all about, I think you're missing the point.
The consumers are the little pigs that love to eat. And having "prime time" television and "late night" television et. al. you can easily seperate the little piggies into little groups. Young little pigs watch shows early on saturday morning. Sell advertising to some sugar-pumping cereal company. Middle age and older male piggies stay up later, and you can sell advertising space during late night shows for Trojan Condoms and Ford Pick-Up Trucks. Of course, lonely/unemployed/gold-digger pigglets watch soap operas during the weedkay, so you sell advertising space to Tampax and Slim Fast. Drink up little pigglets!
Throw a TiVo into the mix, and all the little pigs mix, and you don't know who is doing what and when! And the farm makes much less money.
and spam will disappear. It is the BEST baysinian-thingy spam-mail-proxy stuff I've ever used. I'll stop being so technical and just say TRY IT. Setup your proxy, and watch it rip. In over 400 e-mails I've had ZERO false positives (setup the "magnets" when you get started.). And for Windoze users, yes it runs great on Windoze and is EASY to setup.
So do I still hate spam? Sure. Because it's there. Because it costs money and takes resources from the web. But it is NOT a problem in my life and should not be in yours. The last thing we need is POP3 and SMTP to become "Palladium Improved". Let the world know, starting with yourself, that baysani-something-like proxy's work great.
Oh, and if you use hotmail, never log into their crappy site again, while still getting your hotmail e-mail and spam free at that! Use Popfile, a pop3 proxy from www.boolean.ca. that knows how to speak Hotmail! Now you simply have this:
Hotmail -> Popfile -> PopMail -> Inbox.
Poof! Hotmail and every other account you have, all pulled down into one application spam free (yeah, Popfile supports unlimited accounts). Sweet.
As least here in the USA(TM), in New York City Verizon Wireless is just plain SWEET in regards to reception. And I here from others who travel to other states that Verizon has great coverage everywhere. Combined with the v60i phone and the extended battary, it's a small, simple, phone that will fit in your pocket, and give great battery life and reception.
My 2 year contract with Verizon is up soon. And when i renew for another 2 years I get $100 off the new phone. And I'm simply choosing another v60i, or whatever revision is the latest.
The article focuses on how the relationship between CPU and video card affect various aspects of performance.
I just read that line in the article, got very excited, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks just how much of a fucking geek I am.:)
That said, I love Intel improvements. Why? I wait three months, and buy an AMD ship that gives between 90% and 110% performance and costs a thrid less.
If the US(TM) Government(R) goes ape shit over the fact that its citizens can use 128bit encryption, what are they going to do about unhackable photons!
This is great news for privacy. Sure, if Scully and Mulder want your box, they put a camera in your house, sniff the keyboard for the pw, or just take it via a warrent issued from a Judge who stamps his approval on anything that involves encryption and terrorism.
Overall, great for privacy. I sure as hell want Citibank using this on all their ATMs, Visa on the card readers, etc.
Aren't we smart enough not to be pulled in my marketing hyperzor?
You are... I am... And a bunch of/. readers are too. But the millions of teenagers that grew up without technical skills but love games and subscribe to gaming magazines are looking at the benchmarks to decide what to ask for X-Mas and what to beg Mom to buy at CompUSA. I've seen it happen in person with a girlfriends younger brother. The difference between Quake II scores of 110 FPS to 112 FPS was a world of difference. Of course, the card with another 2 FPS was bought! (Not actual numbers, but I remember the difference was in fact 2 FPS!)
That said, what NVidia is doing is cheating, plain and simple. No laywer or press release can spin it otherwise. Well, they try, but the truth hurts in its simplicity. Change the.exe name and the cheats dissapear. And they are not "optimizations" because when the cheats are working they reduce the quality of the rendered image.
Thanks for all the memories. I just got flashbacks from the days of Primal BBS, Demon's Abyss BSS (133t w@r3z sites around Long Island, NY) and waiting hours to download Wing Commander on 3 1.2mb floppys, zipped up of course with PK-Zip v2.04g.:)
ZModem was sweet indeed when it came out. I went from 2400 baud to 14,400 baud using Zmodem and became the cool kid on a very geeky block.
LOL. Funny post. And as someone who has my home and cell on the New York State DNC allready (I hate those calls) I still make them biz-to-biz. Yeah, double standard. I'm a bastard.
Believe it or not, those business cards are acctually gold for a small business like myself. After a local trade show in NYC I tend to average about 200 cards. I will call all of them and for every 10 people I reach, I make one apointment. So out of 200 cards, that's 20 appointments. Out of 20 (these are standard sales numbers and seem to match my numbers too) 8 will cancel for whatever reason. I will see 12. And 1 out of 4 appointments will buy. Then one of those will cancel. So that's THREE GOOD SALES from 200 cards. At $1000 per sale (per-diem consulting) that's $3000 sitting in the fishbowl of cards. So yeah, YOU are not interested, but out of 200 people three suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople are!:)
How does this affect someone like myself who owns a small business and makes cold calls as a part of the marketing? I cold call other business people, usually at there place of work, and don't sell anything over the phone, I simply try to get an appointment to meet with the person to talk about their productivity and see how my consulting service might help them. Is there any risk to what I do now? Should I even bother with the DNC list, or is it cool since I'm only calling them at work (doubtful number is on the list) and I'm not selling anything during the call?
The problem with Tablet PC's is not their weight! For me, and I would guess many others, although a bit heavy it would be worth it if the other problem was fixed. The biggest problem IMO is that when you pick one up, you feel like you are holding something that will crumble anytime soon! Pick up almost ay tablet, and it has little bits of plastic, hinges, twisty things, buttons and ports all over the fucking place. You don't know where to hold it! Disgusting designs.
When Tablets are as smooth and, dare I say even "fun", to handle as the new small Apple Powerbooks, then I'd buy one ASAP. Ever hold a new Powerbook? Everything is smooth and clean and simple, with all the ports on the same side, in a nice simple row, and nothing sticking out at you. You can run your fingers all along the sides and feel nothing but smoothness. Come to think of it, it's very much like an ex-girlfriend of mine:) Anyway, great design that really adds to functionality.
Apple! Make a tablet Powerbook (iTab?) and there is a cool $1500 in my checking account waiting for you!
Because it forces the fat pigopolists (www.theregister.co.uk terminology?) into making fixes.
I understand your question, but it, IMO, is like asking if "the people" should be free to speak about the bad things their King does, and wouldn't that just be bad for the Kingdom?
Doesn't anyone care about the User Interface and usability? I would gladly pay twice what Real(TM) is charging, just to use iTunes and the seamless way in which music can be browsed/purchased and my library can be listen too. And the playlist creation? Brilliant. Software like MusicMatch makes be puke. It looks great, like a panel from the Enterprise, but from a usability standpoint it is a piece of shit. Unfortunately, most users don't know enough to care about usability. Those that do start looking at Apple and understanding where the charm lies in their products, IMO.
Hey, stop bashing people about reading the article, snob. I read the article! And I think Blender is a great app. Paying money to "free" it is fine IMHO and Apple's iTunes is far better than Micro$ofts DRM, despite what Spam laws might say in regard to stopping 30 second commercial skips.
And you might try staying on topic and not trolling with your off-topic "information overload" babble.
An average wedding in America is about $20,000 for a nice middle-class one with a number of guests. Add the cost of living a life-time with a partner? Priceless, i'm sure. But I would rather get married than spend $100 every weekend to fuck a hoar.
So yeah, I'd rather pay much more and OWN my music than stick my dick in Palladium. I don't want to RENT something I BUY. Anythying otherwise should be forced to advertise itself as a LEASE, just like cars.
As a matter of coincidence (fuck spell checking) I got the new 15GB iPod last week and I'm spending a quiet Saturday afternoon sipping on beers and sorting-retagging all 1500+ mp3's. A lovely way to pass an afternoon or three if you love music. Check the iPod out. It's sweet, you will luv it.
...the way I wrote a file to a disk 5 years ago is the same way I write it today. And I know how to write a file to a disk on Solaris, Linux, Mac, BSD and Windoze since I know the little bit of code that does it in Java. Although a simple real world example, it is pretty powerfull stuff when you think about it. And remember, NO RELEARNING.
I know, AWT->SWING and a bunch of other examples, but a CORE PART of Java does not change. It remains the same as much as possible, in regards to the API.
MS goes ahead and changes things completely every few years. Java, for the most part, does NOT require tons of relearning. The API's are there if you need them, but a majority of them do not change. They might get "cleaned up" a bit, or a few deprecated here or there, or in my opinion a few too many may be created to do the same task, but if you could knock up a Java prog years back, it's the same way today for the most part. SIMPLE.
Slashdot Mirror
1) At end of service, ask what you think could have been improved!
2) Then ask about things they likes about service.
3) Now that tone is possitive, they just spend two minutes talking about why they like you, be blunt and say something like, "And one of the reasons I can charge so little for those benefits is because referrals are a big part of what I do when I help someone as much as I've helped you. Lets sit down for just 5 minutes, and think of 5 to 10 names of people you have ahunch might like to hear about what I do."
Simple, stright up, and you do it right after they finished saying what they likes. Usually, I give a similar line before I work with someone, right after I talk about fees. So I assume the consent of the referral. "Mr Prospect, one of the reasons I only charge $1,200 for the per-diem service is because if and when you love, not like but love what I do, we'll site down for a whapping three minutes and thing of 5 or so people you can referr me too. Does that sound fair?" Then shut up. He'll say "OK" and there you go. Then do the negative-positive-ask process at the end and if you really did perform your duties, you;ve got 5-10 names to call. And only after a bit of expierience would anyone agree with what i'm about to say: If anyone says NO that why will not give you referrals if they like your service, don't take them on as a client. You are looking at someone you will caus eyou tgrouble and cost you probrablly in support with 100 phone calls a month becaus they are cheap. Fuck'em. One out of 50 will say no. FOr peole like that I have a four letter work for them. "Next"!
So to answer your question, I sell my consulting service to a specific type of professional. It's actually a market that gets little attention from small-time consultants, yet could really use their help. Consulting the individual professional in the field is the hot thing. So I sell that service, and then I consult and help their businesses so they can be better at what they do. And then I get a check.
The selling part, the part that eats the soul and carries a dark stigmatism with it, is the major part. I could sell vacumes but sell enough and you can pay the rent! However, I am always nice, professional, and when someone doesn't want something, or need it, I tell them up front.
Selling at first involved cold calling proferssionals at work, simply saying I though they might be interested in meeting to see if I can make their lives easier, etc, and if they want to meet we meet. If not, I say "Thank you and have a nice day." No problem. After hundreds of calls I've NEVER had someone irritated. Becauyse i don't bullshit. I say simply I want to meet to talk about helping them. STRAIGHT to the point in 10 seconds. And believe it or not, if I talk to 10 people, 2 will meet. So its a numbers game from there.
And the cold calling dwindles down a LOT once you work with someone and ger referrals. Service a client, get 5 referrals (lots of good books talk about how to get them easily and without irritating the client) and then I have 5 strong leads to call. Start getting refferals and you don't have to cold call.
So I'm a little vauge in answering exactly what I sell for my own reasons, but it's a consulting service for the individual professional of a specific profession. With that in mind, ask what you are good at? Learn a bit about selling and how to inform people that you are good at it, and know how to convery that your skill can help them save money, be better at thier jobs, and you can get checks for your work. That's the essence to self employment I'm talking about and that I do. And with that, you work harder, but not for less vacation time, as the post discusses. You get much more freedom than any 15 day pool of "days off" could ever give me in the corporate world.
I'll shut up now. One size does not fit all, this is just my expierience and the ways in which I think others can also help themselves.
Yes, anyone can do it. For about $500 in the U.S. you can get an "S Corporation". Then you are self employed and your own boss. Whatever your "deliverable" is, consulting, whatever, learn about SELLING. Learn to cold call, warm call, market, etc. Read three books on each at least, because chances are two are shit and one will be good. USE that book store. Don't just peruse Guns and Ammo and PC Mag. Now read up on accounting. Then basic tax law. Then get yourself an accountant and an attornet to handle the little bits. Initially, you need only $2000 or $3000 the first year (of course this is to keep the S Corp running, I'm not talking about savings to pay for rent).
Now sell your deliverable. DOn't spend money on adverts. CALL. USE THE PHONE. Sell. Then deliver. Sell more. After a year you might end up where I am after doing this, and where many small business people are... making a nice upper-middle class income that is comfy, and you are self employed and your own boss. Work harder... for yourself. Enjoy the great amazing tax breaks US Gov gives you for trying to start a biz. Work harder for less vacation time? Not if you are self employed.
It almost is that easy. After 5 years of GUI Java development, the last of the dot com bubble popped me out of the wall st area. Now I'm self employed and loving it. HARD WORK. You could make 0 but there is NO salary cap. Anyway, use that bookstore. Amazing what's in there. When I sit there reading a good selling book and a tax book, and I look around at all the slobs dripping coffee ofer their shitty little magazines before they have to go to sleep and be ready at their cubicle at 9:00am the next morning, I laugh. End of rant. Go sell. Good luck.
All that said, I love TiVo. Don't own one, but will in a few weeks after I finish working with some larger clients. Can't wait cause it looks like a real treat!
NOT TRUE... STOP. IN US WE HAVE GREAT WAYS TO SEND MESSAGE... STOP. MUCH ADVANCED HERE... STOP.
I mean this most kindly, but in regards to what television is all about, I think you're missing the point.
The consumers are the little pigs that love to eat. And having "prime time" television and "late night" television et. al. you can easily seperate the little piggies into little groups. Young little pigs watch shows early on saturday morning. Sell advertising to some sugar-pumping cereal company. Middle age and older male piggies stay up later, and you can sell advertising space during late night shows for Trojan Condoms and Ford Pick-Up Trucks. Of course, lonely/unemployed/gold-digger pigglets watch soap operas during the weedkay, so you sell advertising space to Tampax and Slim Fast. Drink up little pigglets!
Throw a TiVo into the mix, and all the little pigs mix, and you don't know who is doing what and when! And the farm makes much less money.
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
and spam will disappear. It is the BEST baysinian-thingy spam-mail-proxy stuff I've ever used. I'll stop being so technical and just say TRY IT. Setup your proxy, and watch it rip. In over 400 e-mails I've had ZERO false positives (setup the "magnets" when you get started.). And for Windoze users, yes it runs great on Windoze and is EASY to setup.
So do I still hate spam? Sure. Because it's there. Because it costs money and takes resources from the web. But it is NOT a problem in my life and should not be in yours. The last thing we need is POP3 and SMTP to become "Palladium Improved". Let the world know, starting with yourself, that baysani-something-like proxy's work great.
Oh, and if you use hotmail, never log into their crappy site again, while still getting your hotmail e-mail and spam free at that! Use Popfile, a pop3 proxy from www.boolean.ca. that knows how to speak Hotmail! Now you simply have this:
Hotmail -> Popfile -> PopMail -> Inbox.
Poof! Hotmail and every other account you have, all pulled down into one application spam free (yeah, Popfile supports unlimited accounts). Sweet.
My 2 year contract with Verizon is up soon. And when i renew for another 2 years I get $100 off the new phone. And I'm simply choosing another v60i, or whatever revision is the latest.
I just read that line in the article, got very excited, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks just how much of a fucking geek I am. :)
That said, I love Intel improvements. Why? I wait three months, and buy an AMD ship that gives between 90% and 110% performance and costs a thrid less.
This is great news for privacy. Sure, if Scully and Mulder want your box, they put a camera in your house, sniff the keyboard for the pw, or just take it via a warrent issued from a Judge who stamps his approval on anything that involves encryption and terrorism.
Overall, great for privacy. I sure as hell want Citibank using this on all their ATMs, Visa on the card readers, etc.
True indeed. However your post reminded me of an old Steve Jobs quote, "It's better to be a pirate than join the Navy." :)
You are... I am... And a bunch of /. readers are too. But the millions of teenagers that grew up without technical skills but love games and subscribe to gaming magazines are looking at the benchmarks to decide what to ask for X-Mas and what to beg Mom to buy at CompUSA. I've seen it happen in person with a girlfriends younger brother. The difference between Quake II scores of 110 FPS to 112 FPS was a world of difference. Of course, the card with another 2 FPS was bought! (Not actual numbers, but I remember the difference was in fact 2 FPS!)
That said, what NVidia is doing is cheating, plain and simple. No laywer or press release can spin it otherwise. Well, they try, but the truth hurts in its simplicity. Change the .exe name and the cheats dissapear. And they are not "optimizations" because when the cheats are working they reduce the quality of the rendered image.
ZModem was sweet indeed when it came out. I went from 2400 baud to 14,400 baud using Zmodem and became the cool kid on a very geeky block.
Believe it or not, those business cards are acctually gold for a small business like myself. After a local trade show in NYC I tend to average about 200 cards. I will call all of them and for every 10 people I reach, I make one apointment. So out of 200 cards, that's 20 appointments. Out of 20 (these are standard sales numbers and seem to match my numbers too) 8 will cancel for whatever reason. I will see 12. And 1 out of 4 appointments will buy. Then one of those will cancel. So that's THREE GOOD SALES from 200 cards. At $1000 per sale (per-diem consulting) that's $3000 sitting in the fishbowl of cards. So yeah, YOU are not interested, but out of 200 people three suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople are! :)
When Tablets are as smooth and, dare I say even "fun", to handle as the new small Apple Powerbooks, then I'd buy one ASAP. Ever hold a new Powerbook? Everything is smooth and clean and simple, with all the ports on the same side, in a nice simple row, and nothing sticking out at you. You can run your fingers all along the sides and feel nothing but smoothness. Come to think of it, it's very much like an ex-girlfriend of mine :) Anyway, great design that really adds to functionality.
Apple! Make a tablet Powerbook (iTab?) and there is a cool $1500 in my checking account waiting for you!
I understand your question, but it, IMO, is like asking if "the people" should be free to speak about the bad things their King does, and wouldn't that just be bad for the Kingdom?
And you might try staying on topic and not trolling with your off-topic "information overload" babble.
So yeah, I'd rather pay much more and OWN my music than stick my dick in Palladium. I don't want to RENT something I BUY. Anythying otherwise should be forced to advertise itself as a LEASE, just like cars.
As a matter of coincidence (fuck spell checking) I got the new 15GB iPod last week and I'm spending a quiet Saturday afternoon sipping on beers and sorting-retagging all 1500+ mp3's. A lovely way to pass an afternoon or three if you love music. Check the iPod out. It's sweet, you will luv it.
End of rant.
I know, AWT->SWING and a bunch of other examples, but a CORE PART of Java does not change. It remains the same as much as possible, in regards to the API.
MS goes ahead and changes things completely every few years. Java, for the most part, does NOT require tons of relearning. The API's are there if you need them, but a majority of them do not change. They might get "cleaned up" a bit, or a few deprecated here or there, or in my opinion a few too many may be created to do the same task, but if you could knock up a Java prog years back, it's the same way today for the most part. SIMPLE.